Night Things: A Novel of Supernatural Terror (19 page)

Although he had experienced before what it was like to feel it approaching, for some reason standing in the hallway provided him with an even more vivid sense of its movements through the house. Indeed, as the tingling patterns moved and shifted over the surface of his skin, it was almost as if he could
see
it with his sense of touch, and like some strange sonar mechanism he tracked its progress in his mind’s eye as it wended its way through the labyrinth of corridors. Nearer and nearer it came, traveling through the twists and turns of the house with the ease of a spider negotiating the treacheries of its web, until finally it appeared in the darkness at the far end of the hallway.

For a moment he nearly lost his nerve and wondered about the wisdom of challenging the thing on its own ground. But his anger and growing sense of urgency about learning the truth left him no choice but to remain.

The thing drifted forth out of the gloom at the far end of the hallway. Like a ship pulling a bank of fog in its wake, it seemed to bring some of the darkness with it, and to Garrett’s astonishment, when it reached the first of the corridor’s windows, the moonlight streaming through the panes suddenly winked out of existence. Despite the fact that it was actually several feet from the glass, the bluish shafts of light did not reappear until it had passed by, and when it reached the next window, the eclipse repeated. Garrett watched spellbound as it darkened each window in turn, soaking up the moonlight like some unearthly sponge until finally, when it reached him, it was so awhirl with darkness it seemed like something caught in a cyclone.

“What did you find out?” it asked quietly.

“Why did you send me there?” he shouted, unable to contain himself any longer.

“Why? What happened?”

“I was nearly killed! That’s what happened,” he yelled, all the while searching it for some clue in its behavior that would either confirm or deny his suspicions that it had set him up.

“Why don’t you start at the beginning and tell me what happened?”

The question left him in a quandary, for if it had played him for a fool, the last thing in the world he wanted to do was cooperate with it further and provide it with any more information. But he knew from experience that it did not like to be trifled with, and he feared what it might do if he refused.

Finally, he decided that if he told it, he at least might be able to judge from its reactions how it felt about what he had discovered and perhaps even why it had sent him. Falteringly he began to tell it everything. The deeper he got into his story the faster he spoke, as the memory of his experience once again flooded his bloodstream with adrenaline. But always as he proceeded with the account, he watched every whorl of darkness within the thing, every faint change in its demeanor.

Not once during his recitation did it offer him even the slightest word of consolation for the ordeal he had been through. Rather, it seemed interested only in the facts, probing him carefully until it was satisfied that it had wrung every last piece of information out of him.

But its interest was more than just clinical, for it slowly became apparent that certain features of the story actually excited it. At first Garrett tried to dismiss the thing’s arousal—for the idea that he might be alone and trapped in a remote region of the house with something both evil and unfathomably perverse was too appalling to accept. But as he neared the end of his story, its fervor had become too obvious for him to ignore any longer.

“And you say from the markings on the doll’s neck, it was clear that Fugate had choked it many times before?” it asked breathlessly.

“Yes,” Garrett murmured, weak with dread at the situation he now found himself in.

“And you’re sure you lost him before you reached the highway?”

But the truth finally pieced together in his mind, and instead of answering the question, he asked one himself.

“You’re not a being from another planet at all, are you?”

It turned the void of its countenance toward him, and although he could not see its face, he sensed that it was somehow amused that he had made such a blunder.

“From another planet?” it asked perplexedly. It gave a low, guttural chuckle. “Whatever gave you that idea?”

But again Garrett scarcely even heard the question, for he was now too obsessed with his own. “What are you?” he asked feebly, imploringly.

For a moment he expected it to reply robotlike with its usual equivocal answer—who and what I am need not concern you—but instead it seemed to take pity on his foolishness and gave what it appeared to consider a more substantive reply.

“I am nothing you have ken of, boy.”

The answer confused him. Was it a demon? A ghost? What was it that it was so convinced he could not comprehend it? “No, you’ve got to tell me!” he screamed at it, his desire to know its identity and intent suddenly overpowering his fear of angering it.

“Why?” it demanded coldly.

Whatever caution he had possessed became completely subsumed by outrage. “Because if you don’t tell me, I won’t keep my promise to keep your existence a secret!” he threatened. “I’ll tell everyone about you!”

But before the sound of his voice had stopped ringing in the corridor, he was horrified at what he had said.

But it was too late.

Like a runaway locomotive, the thing came charging at him.

He screamed, stumbling backward, as it placed its massive arms on either side of him and pinned him against the wall. At such proximity the tingle of its presence was so powerful that it felt as if an electrical current were coursing through him. It leaned down and looked into his face, and he saw with astonishment that the vapory billows composing it actually possessed a complex and delicate cellular structure. In what he thought were the last milliseconds of his life, he became mesmerized by the microcosms of design contained within the thing, and was seized with wonder that something so insubstantial could possess what seemed to amount to a biological structure.

But then, just when he was certain the thing was going to kill him, it spoke instead. And more surprising, its voice was even and measured.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

The incongruously reasonable tone of its delivery baffled him.

“Why?” he asked, his cringing diminishing a fraction.

“Because something terrible is going to happen in this house, and if you keep your promise to me, I will protect you,” it replied, continuing to speak in a slow, even-tempered manner.

This answer only added to his dismay and confusion. Was it telling him the truth, or was it only leading him on, baiting him with yet another layer of lies and deceptions so that it could continue to control him?

“Will you protect my mother also?” he asked, wondering what its answer would be.

“Yes.”

“What is this terrible thing that’s going to happen?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“Why?”

“Because I too am bound by a promise,” it said enigmatically.

“And what happens if I do tell anyone about you?” he asked, half expecting it once again to fly into a rage.

“Then I could no longer promise you your safety,” it returned simply. And then, without saying anything else, it moved away from him and started to drift back down the hall.

“Wait!” he yelled after it, his mind still swimming with questions.

But it ignored him.

“Will you please just wait a minute!” he entreated, but still it just glided on until it was swallowed once again by the gloom of the house.

But even before he had regained his composure, he realized it had left him in the worst of all possible positions, for now he was at a complete loss as to what to do. Every time he considered not telling his mother about it and keeping his promise, a voice in him told him he was falling for yet another of the thing’s cunning tactics, and he should not waste another second before relating to her everything that he knew. But when he considered breaking his promise, he remembered the thing’s warning and was once again haunted by the possibility that it was telling the truth, so if he betrayed its trust he was actually sealing not only his own doom, but his mother’s as well. He was trapped in an insidious deadlock. As he returned to his room he prayed that somehow something would happen that would show him a way out of his impasse.

After the line rang four times, an elderly woman’s voice sounded amid the static.

“Hello?”

“Hello,” Lauren said. “Is Amy there?”

“Pardon me? I think we have a bad connection.”

“Is Amy there?” she shouted again.

“Oh, just a moment, please.”

After a thirty-second wait, Amy came on the phone. “Hello?”

“Hello, Amy, this is Lauren Montgomery.” The phone crackled. “Can you hear me?”

“Yes, I can hear you.”

“You may not remember me. I came into your shop a few days back. I’m the woman who moved into Lake House—”

“I remember,” Amy chirped.

“Well, I’ve been doing some reading in this book I bought there,
Great Camps of the Adirondacks,
and according to it, it seems that Lake House has quite a reputation for murder and bloodshed.”

There was a long silence on the other end of the phone, punctuated by still more static.

“Did you know anything about that?”

“Yes, I knew,” Amy said sheepishly. “Just about everyone does.”

Lauren could no longer control herself. “Well, why didn’t you tell me?” she cried in a voice that was half accusation, half anguish.

Amy started to flounder. “Well, gee, seeing as how you just moved in and everything, and you got so upset when I told you about the murder of Sarah Balfram’s fiancé and that guy when Mae Norman lived in the house, I just didn’t want to make you any more upset.”

The answer filled Lauren with rage. “Don’t you realize what you’ve done to me now?”

Amy started to cry. “Why, what have I done?” she exclaimed in innocent dismay.

“You let us just continue to live here without warning us how dangerous it was!”

“I’m sorry,” Amy blubbered, too cowed by Lauren’s angry tone to question the legitimacy of the accusations.

“Well, is there anything else you haven’t told me that I should know about the house?”

“No, nothing. I mean, I know there have been a lot of murders in the house, but I don’t know the people’s names. But I guess the book you have can tell you that.”

Lauren still could not believe that the house’s dire history could have been kept from her so completely.

“And you say that everyone around here knows about the house’s reputation for bloodshed?”

Amy said something, but her voice was drowned out by the crackling.

“What?” Lauren said, “I couldn’t hear you.”

Again Amy spoke, but still her voice remained indecipherable.

“
What
?” Lauren shouted.

“Yes,” Amy sobbed repentantly, her voice drifting in and out. “Everyone knows about Lake House. In fact, people have a saying around here. They say Lake House draws evil like a magnet.”

And with that the phone went dead.

Outside in the darkness, Elton Fugate hid behind a large wisteria vine and gazed up at the windows of the house. He was quite proud of himself for the way he had hid in the woods until he heard the boy start down the highway, then followed the boy from only the sound of his footsteps against the blacktop, always hanging far enough behind so that he would not be seen. When he had seen the boy turn up the driveway to Lake House he had concluded that it was Stephen Ransom’s son who had come spying on him. But he had wanted to actually see the boy go into the house, just to be sure.

The only thing that bothered him was whether or not the boy would tell his mother what he had seen. He noticed with satisfaction that Mr. Ransom’s car was gone, that nice car, and that at least meant he didn’t have to worry about whether Ransom knew.

But Mrs. Ransom, that was another thing.

He had half a mind to go in and take care of her right then and there. And the boy too. That would be the safest thing. He sure didn’t want news of his little nightly ritual getting around to the locals—not after the way they had already treated him. But much as he disliked the idea, he knew he had to wait. It wasn’t that he was afraid. Or even that he wasn’t ready, for he knew he was ready. He had been practicing for over a year now, and he could almost taste it he was so ready.

What caused him to restrain his aching hands and turn around and start back down the driveway was that he knew he couldn’t do anything until the Master gave the go-ahead.

It had been the Master who had started the transformation in him in the first place.

It had been the Master who had given him the power to believe.

And it would be the Master who would tell him when the time was right.